Shot
by thirdbird
Summary: Sam takes a bullet; Gene couldn't care less. Truly. Honestly. Not at all. He will break bones if you suggest otherwise. (Sam/Gene romance, mature but not explicit. Originally published February 2010.)


All coppers get the eventual war wound in the line of duty. They get knifed, beaten up, even shot on occasion. It's like some bizarre rite of passage. They love to tell the stories whenever they've had a few rounds, too, showing off their scars like badges of honor, and it always used to give Gene a chuckle the way their tales of heroism didn't exactly match up with their DCI's memories of the events in question. Ray had fainted at the sight of his own blood like some fifteen-stone jessie. Chris had cried, only what you might expect, though his was only a scratch on the neck, you could hardly even see it. Didn't matter. The mark left behind was the thing, the proof that they'd survived, that they were tough enough.

Gene furtively slid his hand down his thigh beneath the table when he heard them start comparing war wounds this time. Said nothing. He used to join in on these conversations, he'd been known to cheerfully drop trou in the middle of the pub to display the long white twist of scar tissue, but he'd have to be a whole lot drunker than he was to do it tonight. Not with Sam Tyler lurking on his bar stool over there, sitting up on high saying nothing. He looked a million miles away, Gene thought. Like he was barely even there.

"What about you, Boss?" Chris asked, darting a skittery glance at Tyler, who gave a twitch like he'd been woken up in the middle of a dream.

"Me? No. No. Suppose I've been lucky." He managed, Gene thought, to make it sound as though this was something to be proud of. Gene took another gulp of his whiskey and drew in breath, but Ray beat him to it.

"Always hidin' behind some bird whenever the bullets start to fly, eh, Boss?"

Everyone guffawed, Gene not the quietest among them, but he watched Sam while they were laughing, saw his knuckles go white on the glass he was clutching.

* * *

It was just the next week that it happened, funnily enough.

The shot rang out from the upper window as they were walking back to the car. _Fuck_, Gene thought, _knew that junkie bastard was hiding something_, and he flew back in and up the stairs, hollering bloody he-didn't-know-what all the way, but the back window was wide open to the fire escape and there was no sign of the crazy bugger at all, of course, of _course_.

"TYLER," he bellowed, because for fuck's sake, he should have been right on his DCI's heels, had his own Hyde ideas about procedure again no doubt, and with Gene's luck he'd probably somehow nicked the runner already and then he'd go on for days in that smug-bastard way of his until Gene would just have to deck him and then he'd get all self-righteous over _that_-

He'd huffed his way back down the stairs by then and discovered that Sam was still just standing there on the front pavement, rubbing at his shoulder thoughtfully and staring up at the sky.

It was almost nice the way he gave Gene these opportunities to go absolutely ballistic so often. It was almost considerate of him. Gene often couldn't decide whether to make his point with fists or with some truly inventive use of the English language. He was about to settle on a bit of each when he heard a soft _pat_ in the silence before his storm, _pat-pat_, and he glanced down at the bright red spatters decorating the pavement in front of his DI's feet.

"Oh, you've got to be joking," Gene blustered, fed up beyond the pale, and Sam lifted his hand from his shoulder and looked at his fingertips in amazement, raised them to his face and _tasted_ them like the head case Gene always knew he was.

"Thought it was a paint gun," he said, looking up at Gene. "Jesus." He laughed, then, because of course someone like Sam Tyler didn't even know how to get _shot_ properly. "Better tell Ray I couldn't find a bird to hide behind this time."

"Bloody hell," Gene bit out, but what could you do, and after a moment of silent fuming he grabbed Sam by the elbow and steered him toward the Cortina. "Backseat," he directed him. "No bleeding on the passenger side allowed."

* * *

The Guv liked to holler, but he also prided himself on always taking care of his men, so he couldn't quite bring himself to just drop Sam off at the entrance to A&E and go on his merry way. It couldn't be much of a wound, he thought at first, because Sam wasn't making much of a noise about it-not that Gene would have heard much, as he was busy shouting down the radio-but he also wasn't bitching and moaning about Gene's driving which was, it occurred to him, fairly odd behavior on Sam's part. And when Gene screeched to a stop in front of the hospital and went round to drag Sam out of the backseat, he found him sitting in a veritable puddle, pale with blood loss and probably in shock.

"'S like _Reservoir Dogs_ back here," he said, slurring a little, his eyes wide and unfocused, and he gave another nervous-sounding laugh. "You'd make a great Harvey Keitel, I bet. Mister Blond. No. White. Mister White. I think."

"Christ, Sammy," Gene spat out, not that Tyler making no flipping sense whatsoever was anything new, but he looked bad enough to put a little hustle in Gene's step as he went to yell for somebody to bring a stretcher.

It actually wasn't too bad of a wound, turned out, just messy. Gene was never the handholding type but he did feel oddly protective of Sam under the circumstances. Maybe he was an annoying nutter a lot of the time but he was _their_ annoying nutter, Gene thought, and he stayed close, glowering, while they patched him up. Sam did them proud, too, didn't yell once, not even when they had to dig deep into the meat of his shoulder for the bullet still lodged there, which must've hurt like a right bastard. Gene watched the cords of tension form ridges in Tyler's forearms as he gripped the edge of the exam table, watched his jaw clench and relax and clench again, and his own jaw ached in brief animal sympathy.

"Save it," Sam gasped, when the slug finally clinked into a metal tray.

"Souvenir?" the doctor said knowingly, reaching for the sutures.

"Forensics," Gene and Sam both said at the same time, and Sam looked at Gene and managed a very pale grin.

"Finally got you trained, then, do I?" he said, knowing Gene couldn't smack him just then.

It might have been that, Gene thought later, when he tried to pinpoint it. Or it might have been later on. It was hard to say. Seemed as though there should have been some moment when he'd noticed it, the terrible blow he was being dealt. It should have left a mark.

* * *

Sometime past midnight, Gene was out in the hall by the elevators, smoking and thanking the saints that he'd thought to refill his flask that morning, when Sam finally wandered out like a ghost, arm in a sling and pupils blown from the pain meds. He looked surprised to see Gene.

"You haven't been here this whole time, Guv? I could've phoned for a cab."

"Christ no," Gene scoffed. "Been down the pub, mostly. Phoned round half an hour ago and they said you'd be released soon, thought I'd stop by for you on my way home. You can get a bloody cab if you prefer, though," he added belligerently.

Sam gave him a funny sort of look that could have meant a few different things, but Gene brazened it out with a stiff glare straight back that made it clear that his only possible reponse could be "No, a ride home'd be great, thanks," and not one word more.

"They caught the shooter already," Gene informed him as he drove. "Dealer on the run, turns out. Came back to his flat not two hours later, completely off his head, and Chris and Ray had it all staked out. _Chris and Ray _nicked him, if you can believe it. Got a confession out of him and all."

"Did they? Good on them." Sam sounded incredibly tired, as if he could barely be bothered to feign interest, and when Gene glanced over again he saw that he had fallen asleep, all mashed up against the passenger-side window with his head thrown back and his mouth wide open. He looked like a kid.

He didn't wake up when Gene parked the car and so Gene sat there waiting for a few minutes, listening to the tick of the engine cooling and the muffled sounds of various sordid activities going on in the horrible block of flats where Sam lived. It was a wretched place to be going home to at any time, never mind when you'd just been shot, and Gene wondered fleetingly about taking Sam back to his own house instead, letting him crash there for a day or two till he was on his feet again.

Breathing in all that hospital air had done his head in, clearly. All those chemicals of one kind or another floating about. Only stood to reason.

He gave Sam a poke in his good shoulder. "Oi!" Gene said sharply, and Sam sat up with a long gasping inhalation, looking around in utter confusion; you could see him having to put it all back together bit by bit.

Gene saw for the second time that day that he couldn't just walk away, and shook his head, muttering "_Chemicals_," darkly before getting out of the car. He gave his door a vicious slam before going around to open the one on the passenger side and hauling Sam to his feet.

Sam was too wrecked to protest when Gene demanded his door keys and went right in alongside him, shadowing him up the stairs. He didn't object, just leaned on the Guv until they were inside the flat and he could collapse on the bed.

"Jesus, you're in a state." Gene yanked Sam's shoes off him. Eyed his belt buckle for a second, then quickly decided fuck that, he could sleep in his kecks for one night, wouldn't kill him. "Surprised they turned you loose like this; what were they bloody thinking?"

"They didn't." Sam's voice was vague and floaty, his eyes still shut. "I just...left. Soon's I could. I don't like hospitals."

"You-" Gene was speechless for a moment; he couldn't believe this. The nerve of Sam Tyler knew no bounds, and this-this meant he must have known, too, that Gene was fibbing about-oh sodding hell. "I should drag you back round there right now. Tell 'em to fix your broken head along with the rest of you."

Sam mumbled something that sounded like "Don't I wish," and trailed off in a light snore.

Gene stood by the bed for a while, watching him. He reached down and tweaked aside the open collar of Sam's shirt, scowling at the neat white square of gauze with its brown-red bullseye. A few inches lower and he'd have been done for. Gene had half a mind to go down to the station right then and lay hands on the junkie bastard who did this; he'd better pray for a quick trial, that one, and if-

Gene froze, suddenly, realizing that he had somehow, oh sodding, sodding hell, he'd started stroking Sam Tyler's hair, and whatever kind of chemicals were floating around in hospitals, he was pretty sure they weren't the kind that turned you into an actual poof, so he couldn't lay the blame there...

Twenty seconds later Gene was out the door and down the stairs, sliding behind the wheel of the Cortina and slamming the door behind him and even locking it, ridiculously, but it was too late, of course, the damage had been done.

* * *

He couldn't unsee it, try as he might: the way Sam's face at rest had looked almost pretty, the smoothness of his skin laid out over hard muscle and bone. How could you see something like that and not want to touch it? He'd wanted to curl himself around the damaged body of Sam Tyler, like a hard shell over something soft.

So it was the old problem, then, the one he'd never dared give a name to, the one he always thought he'd crushed out of himself until the next time proved him wrong. For it to happen with Sam Tyler was just the last straw, proof that someone up there had a sick sense of humor and a personal vendetta against him.

It would pass, he told himself, it always did, but it was bloody inconvenient to have it happen with someone he saw every day; painful, too.

But Gene Hunt was tough enough, always had been, make no mistake.

* * *

Sam was out of commission for two days, and when he got back it was easy enough to avoid having anything much to do with him for the most part. Everyone else made enough of a fuss over him, and everyone knew how the Guv felt about that sort of foolishness and didn't expect him to do anything but make the usual sarcastic comments. Which he did, but it was a huge effort, and he couldn't bring himself to look directly at Sam while he was doing it.

He spent a lot of time in his office with the door shut, that week.

Sam finally called him on it, stuck his head in the door late one evening after everyone else had left. "Not going down the pub, then? Not like you, Guv."

Gene shrugged, bent his head to his paperwork again. "Gave it up for Lent."

"It's October," Sam pointed out.

"Can I do something for you, DI Tyler?" Gene snapped, shooting him a quick murderous glance. "No? Good night, then."

Sam shook his head and laughed, a sort of _Well, what did I expect?_, then turned to go. Being Sam Tyler, though, he couldn't leave bloody well enough alone, not him, not on his life. He caught at the doorframe on his way out, hesitated, and finally decided to say it: "I wasn't going to tell anyone, you know."

Right, then. So this was how it was going to go. It was nearly a relief.

Gene pushed back his chair and leveled his eyes right at Sam's. "Tell anyone...what, exactly?"

Sam looked taken aback. "Well. Nothing. Just that you were...nice to me. That night, you know, when..." He shrugged. "It was nothing, it was no big deal, just...it was good of you to see me home. I was pretty out of it, and then you left before I could say thanks. So. Thanks."

Gene said nothing. He thought about getting Sam in a headlock and pummelling him, twisting his arm behind his back and shoving him up against the desk, getting right up in his face for a shout. These were the things he was allowed to do to Sam; he didn't have a road map for anything else.

"Okay, whatever." Sam made a handwaving gesture that was supposed to mean something sarcastic in Hyde, apparently; to Gene it looked pretty airy-fairy, but that wasn't something he could say just then. Nothing seemed safe to say. "Just, there's no reason you have to be an extra-big prick now to make up for it, you know? No. Never mind. God forbid you should treat me like a human being except in cases of dire extremity. What was I thinking?"

He did leave, this time, and slammed the door behind him.

_Figure out what a coward would do, then do the opposite,_ Woolf had advised him once, long ago. The trouble with this advice, Gene knew, was that sometimes every possible course of action seemed equally terrifying.

"The thing is," Sam said, crashing the door open again, and Gene nearly leapt out of his skin. "I'd been thinking you were actually starting to like me. For a while there. I don't mean _mates_, we're never going to be _mates_, clearly, but there was a brief moment or two in time when I did get the idea you didn't want to be sick at the sight of me."

Gene lit a cigarette. He looked casual doing it, he hoped, and not at all like his heart was ramming away sixty to the dozen in his chest. "Is this how blokes in Hyde do, then?" he asked. "Bust into their superiors' private offices, unannounced like, and blather on about their feelings for each other?"

Sam's chin went up. "If you like. Yeah. Why not. And see, there you go again, always on about _Hyde_ people and their _Hyde_ ways. I'm fed up with it, Guv. Shut up about bloody Hyde."

A drag on the cigarette. "You're the one always on about it," Gene told him. "Seems like you can't wait to get back there. You might think about how that might sound, to anyone who-" He bit the end of the sentence off, afraid he'd already said too much.

And maybe he had, or maybe something about his voice had revealed him, because Sam was looking at him curiously now, a look that terrified the balls off Gene, a look he'd been dreading and waiting for all his life it seemed.

A coward would crack a joke right now, throw a punch, make an excuse to get out of the room. Gene Hunt sat back in his chair, pulled on his cigarette again, and stared back at Sam. It was like looking down the barrel of a gun.

"Huh," was what Sam had to say. A single syllable, like he'd had the wind knocked out of him by what he was thinking. He narrowed his eyes, tilted his head, and Gene's heart flipped over in his chest, he'd swear it. "You-" It was almost funny to watch him, you could practically see the wheels spinning furiously behind his eyes. You could see him waiting for the Guv to leap over the desk and strangle him to death for even thinking about wondering what he was wondering now, even for a second, but Gene didn't move a muscle. He couldn't.

"No, this is too weird," was what Sam came out with, finally. "Glitch in the program, no doubt. I'm just going to...go, I'm going to walk away, because I know there's a serious, serious wire crossed here somewhere and I've had enough going on this week, and I'm bloody positive I've got the wrong idea and you're about to slit my throat in about thirty more seconds here, right?"

"No," said Gene, and that was all. He'd been turned to stone, apparently. It was like watching a film. Some horrible film that he would have demanded his money back for, if a bird had somehow managed to drag him into seeing it in the first place, which wasn't likely.

"Seriously?" Sam said. "Seriously. Aw, Guv. That's...oh, yeah. All right. So. Okay then," he said, and strode forward quickly, seizing Gene by the shirt front and hauling him up and kissing him.

It was nothing like getting shot. It was like getting _kissed_, only by a bloke, which turned out to be a lot like the regular kind of kissing only with more stubble in it. Gene couldn't breathe, couldn't think, but then his attention was drawn to a sharp pain in his chest area which wasn't at all metaphorical, it was caused by the fact that Sam had managed to seize a bit of skin along with his fistful of Gene's shirt and it hurt like hell. He reached down and disentangled Sam's hand, gently, and Sam pulled back a little, studying Gene's face like he was a...a case report, maybe, the piece of the puzzle that made the whole thing fall into place.

"Yeah?" Sam said, still not really believing it. Gene couldn't blame him; he didn't believe it either. He'd take it, though. Oh hell yes.

"Yeah," Gene told him, and dove back in for more.

It wasn't gentle or sweet or nice. Kissing Sam was a bit like fighting with him, really-more than a bit. He was too excited to be gentle but Sam didn't seem to care. He shoved back, because there was the thing about Sam: he might be that much smaller than Gene but he'd never been afraid of him. The great mystery was how Gene had ever managed not to get hard all those times they'd gotten rough with each other before.

(Maybe he had done, once. Once or twice. He'd convinced himself it hadn't meant anything.)

So Sam came right back at him with furious heat and it was bloody brilliant, turned out. He gasped into Gene's mouth, hands gripped hard into Gene's upper arms. Gene had him up against a wall now and Sam was struggling but it was struggling _towards_ Gene, like he wanted to get closer, right under his skin. There was nothing soft or vulnerable about him anymore, and Gene forgot to wonder at the chain of bizarre circumstance that had started with a junkie's half-random bullet and ended up in this room. He only remembered when he seized Sam to pin him more firmly up against the wall and Sam gave a yelp, not in a good way, and Gene leapt back.

"Jesus, I forgot all about it, Sammy. You all right?"

"Yeah, yeah." Sam touched his shoulder gingerly, working it in its socket. "'S fine, Guv, nearly healed up by now. Come back here, that was just getting interesting."

Gene stepped in towards him again, leaning in and bracing himself on one arm against the wall, but the spell had been broken, and now that he was no longer in the hot urgency of the moment Gene was forced to notice that he'd just been _snogging his DI_ which was...

"Come here," Sam said impatiently, tugging Gene in closer by his belt buckle. "I've been waiting ages for you to work out you wanted to do this; fuck, if I'd known all it took was getting shot I'd've been walking round Castlefield every night with a great big target pinned to my jacket."

Gene started to say that that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard in his life, but Sam's mouth was on his again and his hands were-oh, Christ, all over him, and it was the best thing to happen in the history of recorded time. He made a mental note to send that crazy bastard down in the cells a box of chocolates-hell, a box of _heroin-laced_ chocolates-

He forgot all about the poor sod after a minute, though; tonight, for once, Gene Hunt had better things to do.


End file.
